Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

This is our discussion of the story:


And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side by James Tiptree Jr.

This story can be read online @Lightspeed

This story is part of the group discussion of James Tiptree Jr.'s short story collection Her Smoke Rose Up Forever. (See the discussion hub topic for more info.)

I'm not sure what I thought of this story overall -- kind of a voyeuristic tragedy supposing that humankind contacts alien species only to become obsessed with them, with the characters essentially offering themselves as sex slaves. The idea that humanity is exogamous but that aliens may not be was an interesting one (but does that suppose different evolutionary mechanisms on other planets? it's not explored in the story). I liked the connection made by the title between this imagining of aliens and many Faerie stories (the other in both cases are desirable life-destroyers).

So far Tiptree's futures have been pretty dark -- of course, the title of the collection doesn't exactly evoke visions of sugar plums.

Hillary wrote: " I liked the connection made by the title between this imagining of aliens and many Faerie stories..."

I'm glad you wrote that because I hadn't connected the dots to Faerie stories. Now that you mention it,... yeah.

I was thinking of the fascination with aliens as some sort of groupie culture or a reaction of a less sophisticated/advanced culture on encountering a more advanced culture.

This is the second time I've read this story (it was also included in The Big Book of Science Fiction) and it made a lot more sense to me on this read-through when its given the additional context of Tiptree's other work.